Response

Marianka Swain

Actor Andrew Gower's credits include Monroe, The White Queen, Being Human and Outlander. He's currently starring as Winston Smith in the third West End run of 1984, Robert Icke and Duncan Macmilan's lauded adaptation of George Orwell's novel.

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Alex Wood

As a new staging, it is left to the cast to keep the show’s vibrancy and energy running. Andrew Gower’s Winston is a muddled, confused man, one that gains physicality and presence only when learning of the Goldstein’s resistance forces. It’s a captivating performance of a deeply flawed individual – if this is the last man on Earth then perhaps there’s a reason the species is so close to extinction.

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Nothing is for certain in Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan’s brilliant adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984. The eight-strong cast is superb in their various roles as the plot zigzags, swerves and loops through Winston Smith’s crusade to find Truth in a society where 2+2=5 and clocks strike thirteen.

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Revisiting this play in our current reality makes it clear just how vulnerable we are to state ownership and loss of individuality. It’s a truly terrifying thought, and Headlong and Nottingham Playhouse’s brutal delivery of this novel at the Almeida makes it feel uncomfortably close.

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‘You know this already’. This co-production between Headlong, Nottingham Playhouse and the Almeida Theatre brilliantly exposes the ambiguity of this phrase by stripping away such assumptions around the text. In recovering the appendix, which repositions 1984 as an historical document, subject to misprision and writerly unreliability, a general sense of futurity is upgraded for a potent interrogation of credence and authority.

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So, one of the things that Icke and Macmillan are exploring with their new and, let’s be honest, penetrating analysis of the text is what we do with a novel *called* Nineteen Eighty-Four, written in 1948, in 2013 ... Moreover, what do we do with this novel; a novel that has at once given us a vocabulary through which we now partly explain the world (“Orwellian”, “Big Brother”, etc.) and, at the same time, analysis which seems to be all but ignored.

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After the house lights flare up (“It was a bright cold day in April…”) and gongs chime through the auditorium (“…and the clocks were striking thirteen”), Headlong’s production of 1984 starts with a provocation. Sat at a desk, a dishevelled figure (who will turn out to be Winston Smith) writes onto a page, which is then projected onto a screen. He scribbles the date (15th October), crosses it out, then writes a year followed by a question mark: 1984?

This production is strongly recommended, both as a high bar in what the theatre can do for a familiar story, but also for theatre’s power to move us, unsettle us, and challenge us to look at the world again—and to not forget all that we’ve seen.

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All in all, this new adaptation is electric, focused and clear in its approach. It presents the original novel’s themes through its fantastic characters, set and highlights the important question: who can we actually trust?

Each cast member is as accomplished as the last with Matthew Spencer stepping into the shoes of protagonist Winston Smith with aplomb; one moment a moral compass and the voice of reason, the next a tortured soul taken to the brink.

He’s a perfect foil for his love interest Julia (Janine Harouni) who makes the kind of professional debut others can only dream of. The chemistry between them – in romance as in conflict – is electric.

Staging and sound are both crucial throughout and used to provide the kind of impact that an IMAX cinema provides. Strobe lightning is accompanied by deep growls of music, ratcheting up the suspense and making people shift uncomfortably in their seat.

Rest assured this is not light entertainment and no stone has been left unturned in the production’s ability to convince you that malevolence is a constant that lurks in the shadows. It’s powerful thought-provoking stuff, and at one hour and 40 minutes without interval, never really lets up.

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Alan Doel Just got home from 1984 - or have I? - and have been hurriedly reading other reviews of the play online. Having never been to a professional theatrical performance, yet knowing the gist of the story, I was still thoroughly gripped by the presentation, the various effects and methods of putting over the story and its various ramifications. One hour, forty-five minutes flew by, I found myself on the edge of the seat most of it, at times quite startled by what was happening on stage - it was really a stunning production. I suspect other plays are probably quieter and less traumatic than this. Thanks very much for a gripping, chilling and memorable evening that will stay in my mind for a considerable time. I think it did justice to the book, and much, much more.

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1984 is a razor-sharp adaptation of Orwell’s postwar satirical novel. Tackling an iconic book that depicts a complex and richly imagined world, set forty years into a future that for us is now thirty years in the past, is no mean feat.

I read this book over 10 years ago, so I can't recall if it's a faithful or literal adaptation of the novel, but faithful or not this new play, a collaboration between Nottingham Playhouse Theatre Company and Headlong certainly captures the stiflingly oppressive atmosphere of one of the English Language's most important books.

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In this new adaptation, presented by Headlong and Nottingham Playhouse Theatre Company, the cruelty and control, dominance and destruction implemented by Big Brother and the Party appears even more sinister and omnipresent than ever. This production places the themes of Orwell’s text under harsh scrutiny; the production is complex and intricate, an interrogation into both the days of the Party and its aftermath. Although an inevitably dark and heavy performance, 1984 is astonishingly successful in bringing Orwell’s text to the stage.

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It’s difficult to make an excellent adaptation of a novel like 1984 for two reasons: firstly, the concept of the novel itself is pretty complex, and pinning down the issues of mind control, sanity, truth and fiction are hard to do off the page. Secondly, the novel is a well-loved and respected work that many people feel strongly about. If Headlong had got it wrong, they would have been unpersoned by the critics.

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Exploring the thoughts of the key character, Winston and his refusal to accept the surveillance and constant policing of Big Brother, the storyline is still as relevant today as it was at the time of publication – particularly in sync with recent news stories of phone hacking and the age that consists of GPS tracking and CCTV policing.